Military & VeteransDuring Road Home's two-week immersive program, clinicians see great signs of improvement in the veterans and service members they treat. These signs might include fewer nightmares, better sleep, decreased anger or irritability. They might also be more concrete like a date night with a spouse, a trip to a museum, an afternoon in the park—something an individual with PTSD may not have done in years.
Brian Klassen, PhD, is the Clinical Director of the Road Home Program, part of the Wounded Warrior Project's Warrior Care Network.
For information about treatments for PTSD please visit The Treatment Hub.
The signs that somebody is improving is that their distress decreases, which can look different for everybody. Maybe they’re sleeping a little better at night, maybe they’re having fewer nightmares, maybe they’re getting less angry and irritated during the week. But there’s also concrete ways, too, like actual changes in a person’s life. Like they might go out on a date with their spouse for the first time in years. You know, and what’s particularly exciting at Rush’s program is that as veterans go through our program, you know, they’ll go out and see the city. They’ll get on public transit. They’ll go to a museum. And they come back and say, “It’s been years since I’ve been out in public like this, and it was fun.”
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About the author: Brian Klassen, PhD
Brian Klassen, Ph.D., is the Clinical Director for The Road Home Program: The National Center of Excellence for Veterans and Their Families at Rush University in Chicago, Illinois. Brian spent his formative years training at the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, completing rotations in chronic pain management, residential substance use disorder treatment, and PTSD. Brian has special expertise in providing front-line treatments for PTSD, including Prolonged Exposure and Cognitive Processing Therapy.
